By the winter of 1922-23 the intentions of the French must already have
been known for a long time back. There remained only two possible ways
of confronting the situation. If the German national body showed itself
sufficiently tough-skinned, it might gradually blunt the will of the
French or it might do--once and for all--what was bound to become
inevitable one day: that is to say, under the provocation of some
particularly brutal act of oppression it could put the helm of the
German ship of state to roundabout and ram the enemy. That would
naturally involve a life-and-death-struggle. And the prospect of coming
through the struggle alive depended on whether France could be so far
isolated that in this second battle Germany would not have to fight
against the whole world but in defence of Germany against a France that
was persistently disturbing the peace of the world.
I insist on this point, and I am profoundly convinced of it, namely,
that this second alternative will one day be chosen and will have to be
chosen and carried out in one way or another. I shall never believe that
France will of herself alter her intentions towards us, because, in the
last analysis, they are only the expression of the French instinct for
self-preservation. Were I a Frenchman and were the greatness of France
so dear to me as that of Germany actually is, in the final reckoning I
could not and would not act otherwise than a Clemenceau. The French
nation, which is slowly dying out, not so much through depopulation as
through the progressive disappearance of the best elements of the race,
can continue to play an important role in the world only if Germany be
destroyed. French policy may make a thousand detours on the march
towards its fixed goal, but the destruction of Germany is the end which
it always has in view as the fulfilment of the most profound yearning
and ultimate intentions of the French. Now it is a mistake to believe
that if the will on one side should remain only PASSIVE and intent on
its own self-preservation it can hold out permanently against another
will which is not less forceful but is ACTIVE. As long as the eternal
conflict between France and Germany is waged only in the form of a
German defence against the French attack, that conflict can never be
decided; and from century to century Germany will lose one position
after another. If we study the changes that have taken place, from the
twelfth century up to our day, in the frontiers within which the German
language is spoken, we can hardly hope for a successful issue to result
from the acceptance and development of a line of conduct which has
hitherto been so detrimental for us.
Only when the Germans have taken all this fully into account will they
cease from allowing the national will-to-life to wear itself out in
merely passive defence, but they will rally together for a last decisive
contest with France. And in this contest the essential objective of the
German nation will be fought for. Only then will it be possible to put
an end to the eternal Franco-German conflict which has hitherto proved
so sterile. Of course it is here presumed that Germany sees in the
suppression of France nothing more than a means which will make it
possible for our people finally to expand in another quarter. To-day
there are eighty million Germans in Europe. And our foreign policy will
be recognized as rightly conducted only when, after barely a hundred
years, there will be 250 million Germans living on this Continent, not
packed together as the coolies in the factories of another Continent but
as tillers of the soil and workers whose labour will be a mutual
assurance for their existence.
: At Versailles the French were the most sanguine, then they occupied the Ruhr and the Rhineland ,squeezing an awful lot out in the process.